Editor’s Note: Morning Open Thread is looking for community members willing to take on hosting duties—whether it’s a day here and there or a regular weekly post: Saturdays and Thursdays are open. If you’re interested, just reach out to me or Officebss. And thank you.
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Notes from Below Sea Level
I’ve been reading A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020) and quite enjoying this 566-page tome by the American humorist David Sedaris. This volume is a follow-up of his equally-heavy Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) that came out in 2017 and which I haven’t yet read. Carnival belongs to my sister and I’m borrowing it while she’s on vacation, which might explain why the second of the series is the first I’m reading. I gifted my love the first volume for her birthday last month and will eventually read her copy when she’s done. While I wouldn’t for a moment think of beginning any book series with #2, I think memoir is an exception to any sequential approach to reading. While we may live our lives in a strictly-chronological order, we don’t experience it that way and don’t even necessarily tell our stories that way.
Yesterday was a long day for me, which meant a couple hours in the office before getting on the road for a meeting in a newly-renovated high school gym about an hour away—a meeting that started 45-minutes late and ran an hour over—followed by a second meeting another 30-minutes down the road at a marine fisheries facility, then a long drive home. While I had planned to get back to the office to write up notes and issue assignments based on the meetings, it was after 5:00 by the time I reached town and I just couldn’t bring myself to head back to the office. Like I said, a long day.
The day before yesterday was chaotically productive but still ran some 13 hours, and Monday and Tuesday weren’t much of an improvement on that schedule. Still, I woke this morning thinking about what I might cook this weekend (in addition to stripping beds, cleaning up after having my sister’s dogs over for the last couple weeks, and tackling a bit of yard work) and what block of time I could carve out for a bit of mindless laziness. I haven’t figured out that particular hedonistic time, yet, but I will. That and I’m thinking about steak and shrimp with sides of zucchini and asparagus on the grill. And maybe a nice glass of red wine, which is forbidden on my diet, but I’ve never been one for self-denial on that level. Cheating on my diet in moderation somehow gives me a sense of control and spices the dietary rigor with a modicum of guilty pleasure.
But the cock down the road is crowing, the few strays that came to my patio this morning have eaten and returned to their holds, the dogs I’m sitting have gone out to do their business and insisted on getting in my unmade bed to sleep off the remainder of the night, and I will enjoy these last few minutes on my patio in solitude with a cup of coffee and a cigarette and memories of wild oysters shucked on a wooden boat deck and enjoyed in the bright light of a summer day years ago when Saturdays were longer and languid and stuffed full of time—salty and liquid and messy— just waiting to be cracked open and devoured.
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My hope for the day is that each of you celebrates life in one way or another and finds peace in these turbulent times. Be well, be kind, and appreciate the love you have in your life.
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The Guardian: The Stones’s genius has always been take the haunted, spectral melodies of American blues and flick the casino lights on to them, and so it is here. Done a cappella by a different singer, Jagger lines here like “I never caused you no pain” could have a purely harrowed quality – but he and the band cleverly wax and wane from minor to major chords, carrying this tale of alternating desperation and resignation.
The Telegraph (via MSM): Angry is The Rolling Stones’ best single in 40 years.
My God, it’s good to have the Rolling Stones back. Angry is their best single in four decades, an absolute blast powered by a defiantly dumb stop start riff that recaptures the energy of Start Me Up and Jagger attacking the lyric with his best mockney sneer and an extravagant, leering defiance.
The New York Post: If you thought that the Rolling Stones were going to mellow out as octogenarians, think again.
Just two months after Mick Jagger turned 80 in July — and with Keith Richards right behind him, hitting that milestone on Dec. 18 — the legendary British rockers haven’t lost any of their old bite on their new single “Angry.”
Packing their trademark bad-boy attack, the track previews ‘Hackney Diamonds” — the Stones’ first studio album of new material since 2005’s “A Bigger Bang” — which will be released on Oct. 20.
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?
